


Cape Disappointment

by mitchan



Category: Gravity Falls, Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Attempt at Humor, Gen, Jaegers (Pacific Rim), Kaiju (Pacific Rim), The Drift (Pacific Rim), Warnings May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 16:03:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19994923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitchan/pseuds/mitchan
Summary: For the first time ever, a Kaiju shows up at the Cape Disappointment Shatterdome. And the Kaiju War starts to change course...(Pacific Rim AU, not crossover, with all GF cast).





	Cape Disappointment

**Author's Note:**

> I'm posting this now in order to get the commitment to finish this fic, however silly or unoriginal it may be. At the very least, it'll have some cool Jaeger vs Kaiju fights!

Twenty miles off the Cape Disappointment Shatterdome, the two Jaegers patrolled the coastline. Lumberjack, the newer and bigger Jaeger, was playfully painted in a red plaid pattern covering its chest and arms. Its pilots, “Manly” Dan and his eldest daughter Wendy, sang traditional lumberjack songs as they patrolled. The younger pilots in the other Jaeger, an old and bulky model jokingly nicknamed “Shacktron” for its triangle-shaped head, were not as carefree. 

“Any news, Soos?” Dipper asked the J-Tech Officer. 

“Nothing yet, Dipper! The kaiju signature’s definitely headed for the North American coast, but who knows? I mean, not that Portland’s all that populated, but this area’s got more people than Anchorage, right? Definitely a juicier target,” Soos answered from LOCCENT. 

“Not helping, Soos!” Mabel warned cheerfully, feeling the sharp spike of anxiety through the Drift, and set out to reassure her brother: “C’mon, bro-bro! Third time’s the charm! Don’t you wanna punch a kaiju for reals this time?” she said through the private line. 

“At least it’ll be better than this wait,” Dipper sighed. 

If he were honest, he would have preferred another job in the PPDC, designing new Jaegers under McGucket or analyzing kaiju samples with his uncle Ford. But Mabel had wanted to try out at the Jaeger Academy and Dipper joined in out of moral support. He hadn’t expected to score so high on Drift compatibility with his sister, though it wasn’t particularly strange. What was more of a surprise, to himself and the people who knew him, was that he’d managed to survive the training and become a skilled fighter. Mabel had always been the confident, physical one, but after long hard years at the Academy, they were evenly matched in strength and speed. 

“Hey kids,” that was Marshal Stanley Pines on the line, “no need to worry. This ain’t called the Shatterdome of Disappointment for no reason: we have a perfect record! Zero kaiju battles! Zero kills!”

“That’s not something to be proud of!” Mabel complained. 

“Haha! Not from where I’m standing. Trust me, kid: there is absolutely no way that kaiju is coming here,” sentenced their uncle. 

That was precisely the moment when the alarms started ringing. 

“Uh, guys? Guys! That’s the proximity alert! The kaiju’s coming this way!” Soos’ panicked voice crackled with static and was interrupted as the man dropped the LOCCENT microphone in shock. 

“What? Oh, come ON!” Stan’s pained groan could be heard over the line before the mike was picked up again. 

“Okay, Rangers. I know you’re panicking, Dipper. Don’t. Let’s see, where are the damn buttons on this thing?” Marshal Pines took over the microphone and noisily slapped the buttons on the LOCCENT console. “Here it is, the ugly thing. Category 3 – this guy’s big. Ugh, it’s got reinforced armor all over its back, two nasty-looking horns on its head, and a mace-like bump thing on its tail – a tough guy for sure. So- 

“Marshal Pines, you have to name it! Wait, no, let me name it!” a scuffle was heard over the line as Soos tried to wrench the mike away from the Marshal, finally managing to squeeze between the Marshal and the console. “Oh, I know! It’s like one of those horned lizards, only with a freaky dinosaur tail!  _ Thorny _ !  _ Thorny-tail _ ? Oh, THORNTAIL! How about that?” Soos said enthusiastically over the line. 

Marshal Pines grunted. “Fine, Thorntail it is. Now, what we’re gonna do-

Wendy’s voice rang out over the common line: “LOCCENT, this is Lumberjack. We’ve spotted the kaiju at 11 o’clock, we’re heading to intercept!” 

“Wait, what, you- oh, fine. Kids, approach the area but stay back – let the Corduroys have at him,” the Marshal instructed. 

“But Stan, we can help!” Mabel complained, raring for a fight. 

“No buts except yours on the sidelines! And that’s  _ Marshal _ Pines to you, Ranger!” Stan said with a steely voice.

“Oh,  _ now _ he’s all formal and adhering to protocol!” Mabel said, in Shacktron’s private line to Dipper. 

“Oh, boy, oh, boy,” Dipper muttered, more to himself than anything. 

“Hey,” Mabel said, trying to balance her brother’s anxiety with her own warmth, confidence and thirst for action. “Stay with me, Dip-Dop. We’re the Kickbutt Twins, remember?”

“I hate that nickname,” Dipper complained, but he calmed down. 

Both twins squared their shoulders, the Jaeger moving with them. 

Up ahead, the waters parted as a huge, hulking beast emerged, just in front of the running Lumberjack. Without flinching or hesitating, the Corduroys launched their fierce attack, punching its jaw as it roared at them. The kaiju reared back and charged head-first, its sharp horns threatening to rip apart the Jaeger if it got caught. The Corduroys rolled away just in time. 

“Lumberjack, that armor looks like it might repel a shot from the plasma cannon – let’s not take the risk. You need to turn it around and fire into the belly!” Stan instructed over the comm. 

“Roger that, Marshal,” said Wendy. Circling the kaiju, the Corduroys engaged Lumberjack’s secondary weapon – a giant throwable ax – and threw it with deadly precision at the same moment Thorntail lunged at them. 

Everyone heard the Corduroys’ mad war cry as the ax connected with the creature’s jaw, neatly severing off a third of it. Thorntail stopped and roared in pain, kaiju blue spreading through the water below it. Lumberjack dived in, engaging the plasma cannon, but the kaiju reacted too quickly – before the Jaeger could make contact, it turned around and slammed its tail, spikes and all, right into Lumberjack’s chest. Everyone in the channel heard the Corduroys’ cries of pain. 

The Jaeger was thrown aside like a rag doll, and Thorntail pointed its horns at the fallen Jaeger and charged. 

Before he realized it, Dipper found himself running alongside Mabel, propelling Shacktron forward as Mabel raised the left arm and took aim, firing an explosive arrow bolt. It sunk into the kaiju’s hind leg and exploded upon insertion. It didn’t make a lot of damage but it did make Thorntail turn around to face the new enemy. 

“Kids! What are you doing? I told you to  _ stay back _ !” Stan’s voice rang through the comm channel, and there was definite panic in his voice. 

“No can do, old man. Wendy needs us!” Dipper and Mabel answered as one. 

Thorntail charged them, horns pointed and roaring madly, spreading kaiju blue everywhere. With a cry, the twins faced it head on, Mabel deploying the pincer hand, ready for the attack. A second before contact, the twins moved aside and grabbed the kaiju’s horns. Mabel’s pincer twisted and cracked one of them, and they used the creature’s own strength in a judo throw, twisting its horns so it landed on its back. They didn’t give it time to react, pouncing on the creature. Dipper engaged the plasma cannon as Mabel held out her pincer arm to hold the swishing, flexible tail mace. 

“Fire now!” Stan yelled from the control room. 

Mabel was struggling to hold the tail and keep balance. “Just a bit more,” said Dipper, gritting his teeth, waiting for the cannon to load. 

Before the cannon was fully loaded, however, Thorntail managed to grasp the Jaeger’s leg with one of its hind legs, and kicked, wildly. Mabel lost her grasp on the mace tail, which swung at them immediately. The twins narrowly avoided being hit, but Shacktron overbalanced and fell in the water. Thorntail was above them in an instant. 

Several people were screaming from the LOCCENT comm, but Dipper and Mabel could only pay attention to Thorntail dripping shiny blue blood on their Jaeger, pointing its one remaining horn directly at Shacktron’s nuclear core. There was no time to think, to formulate a plan or a strategy. 

Years of being beat down into a tatami mat kicked in, and the twins reacted – Mabel punched her pincer hand straight into the kaiju’s broken jaw, and the second the plasma gun screen flashed green, Dipper punched it straight into the kaiju’s neck and fired – one, two, three times in quick succession. 

Thorntail’s head blew apart and the body fell heavily into the water. 

The twins righted the Jaeger and stood up, immediately looking at the area where Lumberjack had fallen. 

“LOCCENT- I think it’s dead. Any news from the Cord-“ Dipper started to ask, when he noticed a sudden movement from the water. 

They barely had time to turn around as the kaiju’s tail rose up and hit the Jaeger right on its triangular head. 

It was like being hit in the face with a football and at the same time having a bomb explode in the room next to you. The comms fuzzed with static and were lost for a long moment, while plastic and steel bent and shattered around them. The triangular titanium frame of Shacktron’s head was the only thing that kept it from collapsing.

Dipper felt pain, and he wasn’t sure if it was his own or Mabel’s or the Jaeger’s. There was a lot of noise, the outside world crashing into the impenetrable Jaeger. Mabel was screaming something at him. Blackness ate at his vision at an alarming rate, and his last conscious action was to raise the plasma gun again, blindly, until it connected with something, and he fired. 

***

The foggy world coalesced slowly into something that made sense. Dipper woke up to a soft clicking sound, familiar and soothing. He tried to open his eyes, but the light hurt too much. 

After a while, he realized the sound was Mabel quietly knitting beside him, and it reassured him beyond words. He turned his head, painfully, to peek at her. She was wearing a baggy pink sweater on top of a hospital gown, and her head was so bandaged he couldn’t see her short hair, and her hands on the needles were slower than usual – but she was sitting up, awake,  _ alive _ . 

“Thank God,” he muttered, and then she turned to look at him and dropped her knitting when she noticed he was awake. 

The next moments were blurred, inconsistent – nurses poking him painfully, medication, he probably fell asleep at some point. 

The next time he was awake for a longer amount of time, Mabel sat beside him and patiently answered his questions. 

The tail had been connected to a secondary brain, so it could still move after the main kaiju brain had been destroyed. Thankfully, it hadn’t lasted on its own long after Shacktron went down, and the plasma shot had helped destroy it. 

When he asked about Wendy, Mabel smiled and ducked out of the room, limping a bit. She came back minutes later with a smiling Wendy, her arm in a cast. 

“Hey dude,” she greeted him. “Glad to see you alive.”

“Same,” he replied in a croaky voice. He took a moment to take her in, the bags under her eyes and pale skin, red hair coming out of her normally tight braid. 

“You ok? What happened to you guys?” he asked. 

“I’m fine. I just did something stupid and got myself out of the harness, got my arm busted. My Dad’s fine too, got burned as we were trying to leave the Conn-Pod, but he’ll live. Thanks to you guys, by the way,” she smiled proudly at them. Then she looked worried. “Dude, what about you? Are you going to be okay?” 

“Apparently I broke, like, every bone in my body. Or that’s how it feels. Doctor says-

The door to the room opened with a bang, making everyone jump. “How are today’s heroes? I brought you pancakes!” said Stan, brandishing a plate of pancakes. He’d taken off his suit jacket and unbuttoned his shirt, so he was probably off-duty. 

“Did you make them?” Mabel asked, eying the pancakes suspiciously. 

“Nope! They’re from the kitchen, special order,” Stan said, beaming. 

“Great!” Mabel cheered, and they crowded around Dipper’s bed to eat.

Stan gave them the latest news from LOCCENT while chewing with his mouth open: “So McGucket says Lumberjack’s energy core was damaged, and it’s gonna be hell to fix – those budget cuts aren’t doing humanity a favor. On the bright side, good ol’ Shacktron’s still fixable, we just need to replace the Conn-Pod, though McGucket was going on about an update…”

Suddenly, his pager beeped. 

“Ugh, I’m ignoring that,” he said, rolling his eyes. 

And then, for the second time in less than 48 hours, the Kaiju alert sounded all throughout the Shatterdome. 

Stan grabbed his pager so fast his plate fell, spattering ceramic shards and pancake bits on the floor. 

His face was deadly pale as he turned to look at the three wounded pilots. 

“Movement in the Breach. Another kaiju is heading this way. And this one… this one’s a Category Four.”


End file.
